Some Venus In Leo Inspo

The Golden Era movie star Dolores Del Rio was a triple Leo – Sun, Venus and Ascendant. Her glamor was legendary and beauty tips like “I use Youth Dew perfume oil in my hair‘ became magical mantras to legions of women. Numerous sonnets and portraits exist as homage to her beauty: The playwright George Bernard Shaw even compared her to the Taj Mahal.

Del Rio had famously lavish tastes in everything but particularly perfume, jewellery and cosmetics. Architectural Digest described her mirrored dressing room as “not unlike an altar raised to honor some primordial pagan goddess.”

Yet as the first Mexican actress to succeed in Hollywood – paving the path for another Venus in Leo woman, the formidable Salma Hayek – Del Rio was like a lightning rod for controversy.

She was accused of communist sympathies and unfairly targeted by censors who saw her actual coloring as innately more licentious than the standard celebrity blonde or pale skin prototype. Relentlessly pursued by or in control battles with powerful, manipulative men, her initial Hollywood years were difficult.

“I lived in a hotbed of intrigue, of politics, of lies and malice, of crosscurrents of human purpose. I was hurt so often, I was afraid to express.”

Still, Del Rio was never burdened with faux modesty. The Australian-American costumer designer Orry Kelly wrote about “draping her body in jersey. She wanted no underpinnings to spoil the line. When I finished draping her, she became a Greek goddess…Gazing into the mirror, she said in a half-whisper, ‘Jesus, I am beautiful.’ Narcissistic? Probably yes, but she was right.”

Do you need to be an iconic beauty to deploy over the top mirrorwork affirmations? No. It’s very Venus in Leo and June-Oct 2023 will thus be brilliant for them.

Dolores Del Rio was ultra inspirational in that she identified passionately with her heritage and infused it into her public image at a time when it would have been far easier to erase it.

She also pushed artistic boundaries her whole life, remarkably with even more intensity when she was under political or financial pressure.

A classic creative coup, for example, was to produce and star in The Lady Of The Camellias, re-imagining the (usually in her early 20s) lead character as a 65-year-old woman – her age at the time.

The jeweller Suzanne Belperron – Venus in Leo trine Jupiter + Uranus in Sagittarius – was similarly definitive and uncompromising in her style. Her constant innovation – novel techniques, fresh materials, pioneering concepts – earned her permanent A-list status in the design world.

Famously discreet and privacy-protective, she shunned publicity and her era’s form of branding. Her logic? “My style is my signature.” She had the courage to establish her creative authority early – setting trends rather than trying to tag onto them.

Fashion critic Cathy Horyn – another Venus in Leo woman – wrote that she felt Belperron was only interested in her own ideas and that the designs are “so singular – bold, playful, anti-ornamental – that they tend to strip away one’s assumptions about jewelery…”

The artist Dorothea Tanning was born with Venus in Leo square the Moon and Saturn in Taurus. She summed up her life credo as “Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars.”

A full-time fabulist and creative force, she wrote, sculpted and painted in multiple mediums, not so much pushing artistic boundaries as completely over-riding them.

In terms of money and acclaim, artistic careers are often tidal by nature – Tanning rode each wave with aplomb. She was gracious at the top and supported herself with commercial art/costume design in between. 

Birthday (below), arguably her most famous work, was tied into her great love story. In late 1942, with Pluto conjunct her Venus in Leo, the surrealist artist Max Ernst came to her apartment to appraise the painting for an exhibition.

He liked the picture, suggested they play chess together – Tanning loved gothic novels, flowers plus chess – and never left.

They were both married to other people at the time so it became one of those Pluto-Venus affairs but the relationship lasted 30 years, until his death. He wrote impassioned surrealist love sonnets to her:

Not only did the unconscious streetlights whisper their sinful names with silent music and pale devotion

Hermes and Dorothea

Hermes and Dorothea

but also they watched picking high-heeled oranges in her blouse and reverentially noticed they were black and warm

They melted away being their fingers with laughter and equinoxial storms.

Interestingly, Tanning was self-taught and didn’t like art galleries or the art scene. She was, however, keen on magic: “I’ve always been drawn towards esoteric phenomena: the illogical, the inexpressible, the impossible. Anything that is ordinary and frequent is uninteresting to me, so I have to go in a solitary and risky direction.”